Today, it is very easy to spend much more for software than the computer on which it is installed. Fortunately, there are several top quality software packages that are available for free download, typically with no strings attached. While some allegedly “free” software comes with advertising, spyware, or other forms of malware, it is nice to know that there is still some legitimate free software available that lacks any type of questionable baggage.

One of my perennial free favorites is IrfanView, currently available as version 3.97, downloadable from www.irfanview.com or almost any major download resource as an 850k file. This feature rich program was written in Bosnia by Irfan Skiljan. IrfanView is a comprehensive graphics editor and viewer with features competitive to software costing over $100. This software can be used to view graphics and digital photos in virtually any format, and can quickly convert an image or series of images from any graphics format to any other digital format, a valuable utility for those taking digital photographs. For those of us who use scanners to copy images or documents, IrfanView is a very capable front end that can import images from almost any compatible image resource, and present that image for cropping, correction, or other enhancements or image editing. Built into the software is a slideshow creator, which can combine images into a self-executable file that does not require any additional software or viewers to present the show. This is a useful feature for those who want to send CDs or emailed images to someone who lacks graphics software. Images can be easily edited, resized, and cropped, with contrast, hue, luminescence, color depth and other adjustments readily available.

IrfanView is an excellent program for dealing with still images, but a companion product “All Plugins”, adds video and music features to the graphics viewer. With the plug-ins file installed, IrfanView can play almost every known audio and video format, making it a program with wide-ranging capabilities. I am so enamored with IrfanView that I routinely install it on any computer that I work on or use.

Many computer users may not be aware that Microsoft does not have a monopoly on the internet browser market; just because Internet Explorer is integral with almost all versions of Windows, and countless users take it for granted, it may not be the best or most feature rich browser. While there are several excellent web browsers available, the rising star of the browser market is Firefox, available for free download at www.mozilla.org. Firefox, currently available as version 1.06 as I type this, is written as an “open source” program, meaning that programmers anywhere can write add-ons, plug-ins, and other adjuncts to the program, with thousands of such free options currently available. Firefox can do almost everything better than Internet Explorer, including loading pages faster, offering tabbed browsing (tabs at the top of the page for different web pages), and a generally more secure browsing experience than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer offers. About the only functionality lacking from the current version of Firefox is Microsoft’s proprietary Active-X utility, used by some websites to install software; this lack of Active-X functionality is not necessarily a bad feature, as Active-X is sometimes used to load malware on a computer! Firefox also offers features currently unavailable in Internet Explorer, such as the ability to receive the new and popular RSS news feeds without the need for an external utility. When Firefox is downloaded (about 4.7meg file size), and installed, an option is offered to copy Internet Explorer favorites (bookmarks), history, cookies, passwords, and other conveniences into Firefox. This is a non-destructive process that leaves Internet Explorer absolutely unchanged. There is no conflict having more than one browser installed, and Firefox has earned in excess of a 10% market share, to the detriment of Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer typically comes from Microsoft with an email program, Outlook Express, which has made Outlook Express one of the most widely used email programs, and Firefox offers a competitive and arguably superior free email program, Thunderbird, available for download from the Mozilla website. Just as Firefox can import data nondestructively from Internet Explorer, Thunderbird can import data from Outlook and Outlook Express, substantially configuring it on the fly. Thunderbird offers all of the conveniences and features of the full featured Outlook, except it does not currently include a calendar function. Alas, that shortcoming has not been lost on Thunderbird, and a free calendar plug-in is available from Mozilla.

For those preferring suites of software, Mozilla is offering a free suite of internet utilities, including Firefox, Thunderbird, and other web utilities lacking in Microsoft’s offerings. Currently available for download from the Mozilla website (11meg) as Mozilla Suite (also called Mozilla 1.7.11 as I type this), this suite supports web browsing, email, IRC chat, RSS news feeds, and an HTML (web page) composer. I find the HTML composer especially useful, as it is substantially “WYSIWYG” or “What You See Is What You Get”, and has the ease of use and menu familiar to word processor users. Supporting such advanced features as “CSS” (Cascading Style Sheets), and other modern features, the Mozilla HTML editor is all that most web page authors would need to create professional web pages, with the ease of typing and formatting in a word processor.

There are many other excellent free software titles available which compete against, and sometimes beat in terms of quality and functionality, the major and often pricey competitors. In future columns, several of these products will be discussed.

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